Back to the ABCs
by SpotlightAsagi
Summary: We forgot our ABCs. Who needs them with Bakudos 1, 2, and 3? A series of related one-shots detailing how all the Vizards lost their many jobs and, as a result, found their place in the afterlife… Leaving a massive trail of pink slips and destruction in their wake. Post-Winter War, Pre-Xcution, Vizard-Centric.


**Back to the ABCs**

**Prologue: The Job Interview**

The Hell Butterfly was a delicate messenger: graceful, nonthreatening, and, in the context of the infamous Vizard warehouse, completely out of its league.

Really. Hiyori's sandals were practically designed for smashing the poor things against walls or floors or faces. All three locations occurred, due to three separate offenses in one very short span of time. It wasn't even on purpose—the pitiable butterfly was just an innocent victim of circumstance.

It was Mashiro who first noticed the Hell Butterfly as it fluttered weakly down to rest. The self-styled superhero approached it with some sort of morbid curiosity once she ascertained that Hiyori aimed her fury toward Shinji or Hacchi. Mashiro poked it gently, then pinched a wing between two fingers, holding it up at eye level. "Hey dummy Kensei," She whined loudly, "Wha's this? It's all broken and stuff."

"How the hell should I know?" Kensei called back in a relatively mild tone and turned to face Mashiro. His perpetually displeased expression took on a confused cast as he spotted the crumpled black mess. He moved in for a closer look. "A bug?" They usually didn't get any company, especially from bugs. "Hacchi! Is the barrier busted again?"

Hacchi, from his defensive position cowering behind one of his shields, hesitated and said, "Possibly. Hiyori— "

"Don't ya go blamin' this on me ya shitty pinky. This is all your and Baldy's fault!" Hiyori interrupted, punctuating the statement with a vicious but futile sandal strike against the golden energy.

"Isn't this a little unreasonable, Miss Hiyori—?"

"No!"

Hiyori dolled out some punishment to Shinji for whatever reason then returned her attentions to Hacchi's barrier. When her Zanpakutō came into play, the rest of the Vizards scurried over to Kensei and Mashiro, mostly because it was the only corner likely to be safe from spontaneous destruction.

"Hey," Rose said in his typical floaty manner that belied the fact that he had run from Hiyori like a highly-strung bunny, "What are you holding there, Mashiro?"

Mashiro didn't really respond; just thrust the insect in his face. "Eww, it's alive Rosie. Do something!" Sure enough, the Hell Butterfly still struggled on in determination to complete its mission.

Rose eyed the little thing with distaste. He was getting nothing but unpleasant dissonance from the weak twitching. "A bug? Hacchi—!"

"It's a Hell Butterfly, morons. Even I can see that," Lisa told everyone blandly.

There was a beat of silence where everyone in the near vicinity looked again and tried to see the connection. They could kind of see it, but still—"You sure, Lisa?" Love asked. "It looks like a windshield got the best of it and I didn't know that humans could see them, much less hit 'em with their cars."

"That's kind of careless, don't you think? If they can't see them then they can't avoid hitting the poor things," Rose said. "Has it tried giving you a message?"

"No," Mashiro responded with a rapidly growing pout, a little offended that the butterfly didn't think she was worth talking to. "Hiyori, Shinji, Hacchi," She sang, drawing out the last syllables each time, "There's mail for us! Come see, come see!" Hopefully they could beat the message out of it!

Hiyori glared from where Shinji was bleeding all over her hands and forearms. She had just finished berating him for letting his sandal-inflicted wounds get her feminine hands dirty. She was a respectable young woman, not a serial killer. Everyone stiffened form unequal parts trepidation and terror when her gaze caught them. "Who the hell sends mail here? We don't want no damn mail!"

"But it's from the Soul Society, Hiyori!" Mashiro protested.

"What?" The angry Vizard hesitated, and then redirected the glare toward an already abused bug. She stomped over, intent on hearing what the hell they even wanted and letting the Soul Society know what the hell she thought about it. Everyone else quickly made way for the Hiyori and the other two who were trailing her in the most discreet way possible. "Why isn't it saying anything?"

"Look a' how bea' up it 's," Shinji said, making his assessment from over Hiyori's shoulder, holding his profusely bleeding nose gingerly, "Hope the me'age i'n't toast."

"I could try to heal it," Hacchi offered, but was quickly shushed. The message was starting and every individual, no matter how stoic they wished to seem, leaned in to better hear.

The sound quality was broken and whispery, much like the creature itself. There were long pauses between syllables and it sounded as if the person recording it had been hacking up a lung, "Be… ta…. Misunderstandings… ke… Shinj…. Lo… se… K… Sei…. Lisa… Hiyo… Iro….Chi… Soul Society… Gain… Shi… benefit… Accept… Will… Negotiate… Help… Us… Hell…"

The butterfly collapsed weakly into Mashiro's cupped palms in the dead silence following the message, punctuated only by a sad gasp from Mashiro.

"Holy shit," Shinji commented eloquently.

"No shit," A still stunned Hiyori shot back on reflex.

"Bullshit," Kensei said, not quite believing the cryptic message.

"They can't be serious, can they?" Rose asked.

"We just locked up the Eldritch Abomination— "

"Get off of the internet, Love."

"Well," Hachi began as a golden glow surrounded the messenger, "There's no way to tell for sure from here. This little guy won't repeat himself."

A chorus of groans and excuses sounded almost immediately, though they all knew Hacchi to be correct. It didn't stop anyone saying they needed to go to the grocery store, were currently choking on a black pretzel, were suffering from low blood pressure because of a stupid monkey, were suffering from high blood pressure from too much contact with baldiness, planned to collect data from the bathhouse, didn't want their new piercing to get infected, or had just been struck with a bolt of musical inspiration that could not wait until later.

"But we owe them," Hacchi overrode all of their excuses effortlessly with just a few words and no expletives.

"Shit." Most of the Vizards chorused when they knew they had been beaten.

And so they went to the Soul Society, guided by one very unfortunate Hell Butterfly.

**A.B.C**

"Looks normal, let's go," Hiyori demanded as soon as she noted a conspicuous absence of smoke, rubble, and screams. She turned on her heel, but Shinji easily caught her by the scruff of the neck and held her in place.

"Where do ya think you're goin'?" Shinji asked as he scanned the area for both motion and unusual fluctuations in Spiritual Pressure. There were none to be found, which made Shinji—already predisposed to mistrust—suspicious. Time to stay on alert for an ambush or something, not that he thought anyone would be able to sneak up on them effectively after a hundred years on the run. "We dunno if anyone's messin' around yet. Let's take a closer look."

"Shut it, Baldy!" Hiyori shouted, turning on Shinji and whacking him again. "What are we gonna do? Just up 'n' ask who died? Huh-?"

Love frowned as he hefted Hiyori over his shoulder to prevent too many outbursts. "That's what we're going to do," He confirmed. "We need to find someone who knows us and is highly enough ranked in order to tell us what we need to know. Ideas?"

"Old man Yama…"

"No."

"That dumb shit Mayuri."

"Hell no."

Lisa very seriously pushed her glasses up on her face, drawing everyone's attention when the light caught them. "Well," She began, "There's Shunsui," She scowled at someone who sniggered suggestively, "Ukitake, Yamamoto of course, Unohana, Kurotsuchi, Suì Fēng—to be avoided—Nanao, your fanboy— "

"He's not a fanboy, he's the goddamned Lieutenant of Squad 9," Kensei interjected defensively.

"But Ken-Ken, his face matches your abs!"

"Why you—!"

"Right, well," Lisa deadpanned, secretly eager to get everyone back on track, "There's also Rukia, Akon, Princess Kuchiki, and anyone who got a good look at us in Karakura Town." She looked around at the faces twisted up in thought or blank with boredom. Apparently she had spoken too to long for some of them. Mashiro was among them.

However, she had listened long enough to hear a certain name. "Lisa, Lisa! I wanna go see Ukitake! I wanna, I wanna!" She wheedled with adorably puffed up cheeks that had little to no effect on most of them. "He's gonna give me candy and nobody's going to beat him up before we get there. It's not possible! Please, please, please, please, please, please—!"

"Alright already!" That was Kensei.

"Yes, yes, fine. We'll go visit Ukitake, but only because he's trustworthy," Rose relented after seeing everyone's patience begin to crack—Kensei's not included. They were here on business and, while he would usually let everyone do their crazy thing, there was no time to be wasted. "Hey—" The musician croaked as his breathing was tightly restricted by a pair of overly enthusiastic arms embracing him.

"Yay! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Mashiro said before she was pulled back and thrown over Love's other shoulder, opposite to where Hiyori was still struggling and screaming bloody murder to uninterested ears. "Aww, Lovey, wha's that for?" Mashiro asked.

"Well," Love responded with a bit of amused affection in his voice, "If you paid attention you'd see that most of us are already on our way. Come on, we need to catch up."

"You'd better at least let me walk on my own, damn it!" Hiyori demanded, but fell silent when they all Flash Stepped away.

**A.B.C**

_What a beautiful day_, thought Jūshirō Ukitake as he sat down at his table for some tea. It was fairly peaceful, the sun was shining perfectly with not a cloud in the sky, and they had gotten several looming issues resolved in the meeting earlier in the day. Even more amazing was the fact that they'd managed it without taking the entire day or executive command. Though they still hadn't restored the Central 46, the Soul Society could still function.

Which was great considering that it led to him returning to his quarters early for some desperately needed rest. Ukitake sipped his tea and furrowed his brow. Something was missing. Not enough sugar, if that was possible. Well that was fine, he's just get some more from the sugar jar—It was empty. Was it really possible that he had run out of sugar? He frowned in concern. Now he'd either have to go out himself or ask someone else to do it for him… but he didn't want anyone to be inconvenienced. Then it was decided. He nodded his head firmly, leaving no room for self-argument—he'd go out for sugar right after he finished his tea. A hard candy should work well enough to supplement the tea's sweetness, and he had plenty of those.

Ukitake smiled contentedly. His tea now tasted slightly of grape candy, but it was still very good. So why was someone knocking on his door? He prepared to get up and check, reaching out for familiar spiritual pressures, but was very unprepared for a green haired girl jumping into his face. "Hey Mister Shirojushi! You have candy right? Can I have some? Oh yeah and has anyone died recently?" She all but screamed into his face.

Ukitake's mouth opened widely with the teacup still to his lips. Tea, sugar, and a very round hard candy slipped down his throat. He coughed, eyes bulging widely as he attempted to dislodge the foreign object from his air passage.

"Huh, Shirojushi? What's the matter? Aren't you happy to see me?"

She received nothing but more coughing in return that translated roughly as, _Yes I'm very glad to see you but I'm choking and could you help please and not just stand there like this is my fault?_

The rest of the Vizards piled into the modestly sized room, save Hacchi because he was having trouble fitting through the delicate door. Mashiro immediately latched onto Kensei's arm, babbling about mean Captains and candy. The rest of them could see a better picture of what was going on than their least mature member, but none could claim to be anything similar to a doctor.

"What the hell? The sick guy's having another attack!" Kensei shouted as if the man wasn't within earshot.

"Well, where's the blood? Normally it's a crimson waterfall by now," Rose reminded them. It didn't do Ukitake a whole lot of good, but at least they could assume that he wasn't going to die of blood loss this time.

Sometime during the conversation, the coughing had stopped.

"He stopped, guys. Is that a good thing?" Mashiro asked hopefully.

"What? How the hell is not breathing a good thing?" Hiyori roughly reminded.

"No way. We can't be seen at a death scene. We were _just_ exonerated," Shinji said, always the practical one when it came to evading the law and pushing the blame onto someone else.

"Stop using such big words you baldy!"

Lisa was the only one actually still watching Ukitake for signs of communication. With great effort, he brought a hand to his neck and signaled for help again, hoping that Shunsui's former lieutenant would be smart enough to get the message. Her eyes widened in understanding and she whirled around to shout at her companions. "You idiots! He's choking! One of you guys do CPR now!" She snapped. "Hurry!"

"Wait. Is he contagious?" Someone wondered aloud, though luckily Ukitake was too preoccupied to take note of who it was. Otherwise the kind, gentle man would have throttled him at the next available opportunity. Somehow, choking was the only thing he could really think about at the moment.

Love wasn't really listening to anyone. Rather, he was cursing the fact that everyone was just standing there and that Lisa didn't know what CPR was actually used for. If Ukitake was unconscious, that was one thing, but for now the Heimlich Maneuver would have to work. If it didn't, then CPR would be necessary and Ukitake most definitely wasn't his type. Love clasped his hands around Ukitake's middle and set about trying to dislodge whatever it was from his throat. It took a few tries and he had to put a fair amount of force into the thrusts, but the piece of candy came flying out and stuck solidly onto the wall.

Love put a hand on the weary man's shoulder to steady him, Mashiro looked disappointedly at the loss of a perfectly good piece of candy, while Lisa stared intently at Love and Ukitake. He would have sworn that the usually deadpan girl was smirking as the light caught her glasses.

"How kinky," She said pointedly.

"Shut up!"

Ukitake wondered why he had to deal with this.

**A.B.C**

"So what you're saying is," Shinji confirmed, "That you sent us a screwed up Hell Butterfly that sounded like a distress signal that lead us to believe we were obligated to run over here lend a hand which was actually just an invitation to come back to work at some unspecified job. Is that it?"

They were in the Fourth Division's Infirmary, Ukitake sitting in a sick bed just in case. Somehow they had managed to squeeze an inordinate number of highly spiritually powered individuals into one teeny tiny room designed for only a few near comatose patients and were holding a makeshift captain's meeting. Neither Ukitake nor Unohana were very happy about it. They were either disappointed that they had another captain's meeting or were irked that their peaceful sanctuary had been forcefully invaded in a way she could do little about, but they would put up with it because they had a century's worth of amends to make.

The healer smiled sweetly, the patient nodded his head, and Kyōraku responded, "Sure. That sounds about right."

A groan from all the Vizards went up. They had come all this way—something they had all sworn with various levels of passion to never do again—for nothing. A good number of them looked torn. They wanted to stay firm in their resolve, but they'd be lying if they denied that they'd missed their home. Some, like Hiyori in particular, looked more angry than anything.

"Why the hell would you do something like that to us? Were you trying to manipulate us, huh? You knew we wouldn't come back on our own, is that right?" Hiyori spat, looking on the verge of furious tears. But she refused to let them fall.

"No!" Ukitake vehemently denied. "We would never do something like that; I would never let them do something like that to you all. It was an honest accident. Something must have happened to it on the way."

"Why the hell do you even use butterflies, anyway?" Kensei growled lowly, "If you don't want them breakin' then why don't you use cockroaches or something? They fly."

Kurotsuchi looked thoughtful. "That might be an experiment worth pursuing—"

"Disgusting," Suì Fēng sniffed in distaste. "This is the first incident of the sort. Usually they are sturdy enough to survive the journey. I wonder what happened?" Her tone was snide. She was more than a little suspicious of them, as she was anyone who had left in disgrace, but the decision had been made to give them a second chance. It was her duty to follow through.

"Please," Komomura said, "We know we have done you a great injustice and did not intend to antagonize. It was the opposite of what we wanted."

Hiyori glared at everyone who had spoken. "Fine then, we can go home now, right?" In the corner, Hitsugaya looked relieved that conflict had been avoided.

"Now hang on a minute, Miss," Kyōraku said and received a glare from Lisa for his word choice, "You might want to hear us out. It's a good thing that you came here! Now we won't have to badger you for months on end. Just give this a shot and if you don't like it you can go home. Yeah?"

"I'm inclined to agree with Captain Kyōraku," Unohana said, smiling hopefully. "We would be honored if you would at least give us this chance."

Inwardly, the Vizards gulped. It didn't seem to be up for negotiation. If they refused, Unohana might be _disappointed_ in them.

Suddenly two spiritual pressures made themselves known—Yamamoto's and Kenpachi's—and the door opened dramatically soon after. The old man was looking just that: old. The crazy one matched his description as well, eyeing each of the Vizards eagerly as if he was trying to decide which being with the inner hollow would be the most fun to fight. He'd missed his chance with Ichigo, after all.

"Hey," He grinned. "Did I hear something about leaving? 'Cause if so, then you'll have to fight me first."

"That's enough Captain Zaraki," Yamamoto stopped that train of conversation before it could really get going, stomping the cane for emphasis. "We did not come here for a fight," He looked at each of the Vizards carefully, gauging each of their reactions to the declaration, "We have invited them here in order to tell them several things. Unfortunately, Captain Kuchiki of Squad Six must be absent for this meeting." It was unusual, but probably for the best when considering what group they were discussing. "First, you are no longer banished from the Soul Society or Seireitei as you have already discovered. Second, all records of crimes real or fabricated have been erased in light of Aizen's betrayal and your assistance in his defeat. Third, Captains Ukitake, Kyōraku, and Unohana have insisted upon employment for all eight of you. Should you choose to accept, we have several positions available for consideration."

"If not, we _will_ have something to say about it," Ukitake warned in the nicest manner possible.

"Do any of you have questions for us?" Unohana asked gently.

"Just one demand," Shinji said after looking around at his group and silently conferring. "You don't split us up, or we split." The eyebrows of everyone who knew them before shot up to their hairline, surprised—but not really—at the development of over a century in exile. All were obviously in agreement. Their body language said nothing else. Mashiro's pleading eyes, Hacchi's carefully clasped hands, Kensei's stubbornly crossed arms, Rose's careful finger-brushing of his hair, Love's deceptively relaxed stance, Lisa's daring twist of the mouth, Hiyori's telling silence, and Shinji's unusually serious expression told them that the Vizards would not compromise that point. It was not even up for discussion.

Kyōraku smiled suddenly. Of all the people to be exiled with, they weren't bad ones. "I think that can be arranged." Shinji's lips cracked into a toothy grin and held out his hand to shake.

"Deal."

**X.Y.Z**

**A/N: **Who loves the Vizards? I do. So here's a couple of things about this story.

This will be a series of oneshots updated whenever I happen to complete a chapter or am struck by an idea. Go ahead and offer an idea if you have one—I'm sure that there are many possible occupations in the Soul Society that I won't come up with on my own.

Try to catch all of Love's Pop-Culture References in each update. I'll have a list of them at the end of the following chapter.

And finally... Reviews are just about the nicest thing a writer can get, so I would be very excited to see a few at the very least. They make me more enthusiastic about my stories, even if it's just a few words or constructive feedback. So review, please?

See you next time!


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